Death in a Scarlet Coat

by David Dickinson

  All was not well in the hotel that afternoon. There was a constant stream of visitors with long faces come to confer with the manager. As afternoon tea was being taken he came to talk to his new guests. They were, he said to himself, his last hope, and a pretty forlorn one at that.

  ‘You seem to have plenty of visitors this afternoon, Mr Drake,’ said Lady Lucy cheerfully. ‘Is there some big social function on this evening?’

  ‘You could say that, Lady Powerscourt,’ said Drake, stirring his cup of tea slowly and sadly.

  ‘Is there anything we could do to help, Mr Drake?’ asked Powerscourt. ‘You have been more than helpful to us here in our time of trouble.’

  George Drake looked at them carefully. It’s worth a try, he said to himself. It’s a pound to a penny they won’t be able to do a thing, but you never know.

  ‘This is how it is,’ he said finally, ‘if you have the time to listen to my troubles. The local vicar and I run the choral society here in Candlesby. I do the organizing, book the hall, get the tickets printed and sold around the town and so forth. The Reverend Moorhouse is in charge of the singing, the works to be performed, that sort of thing. He’s got a beautiful speaking voice himself, the vicar. They say some ladies come from miles around to hear him take Matins on a Sunday morning. He was a singing scholar or whatever they call them over in Oxford when he was younger. His congregation shrinks whenever they hear his curate, Reverend Flint, is taking the services. This is the problem, my lord, my lady. There’s a performance of Handel’s Messiah scheduled for this evening. The choir have been working on it since July. It’s been advertised all round the district for weeks. Vicars far and wide have mentioned it in their parish notices. The local newspaper has run a whole series of articles about the performance as if nobody has ever sung in Candlesby before. The Bishop of Lincoln himself is planning to attend.’

  George Drake paused. Powerscourt had a faint suspicion, nothing stronger than that, about what was coming.

  ‘Forgive me if I’m boring you,’ said Drake, looking anxiously at his visitors. ‘I’m coming to the point, I promise you. Those people at the hotel this afternoon were all here to cry off tonight’s performance or to cry off on behalf of their friends or relatives. We’ve had a terrible dose of the influenza round here this week. Some of the choir can’t speak, let alone sing. To cap it all, the old Earl up at the big house was brought home dead on his horse this very morning and God only knows how many people might have to miss the performance because of that. Not’, Mr Drake added with feeling, ‘that there will be many local mourners for the vicious old bastard.’

  ‘Surely, Mr Drake,’ said Lady Lucy in her most emollient tones, ‘it doesn’t matter if you lose a bass or two. The others can just carry on. I don’t know what size your choir is but surely it won’t make much difference if you have five basses rather than six, if you see what I mean.’

  ‘I do see what you mean, Lady Powerscourt; I can see it very clearly. That’s not our problem, I’m afraid. It’s the soloists. Two of them and the two understudies, tenor and soprano, all laid low, every single one of them. The chief tenor has to croak to speak with his wife. The soprano woman has taken to communicating with written messages on slips of paper as if she was back at school. What are they going to sound like in the great high spaces of St Michael and All Angels in Candlesby High Street with the Bishop in the front row in his mitre and all? I don’t know what we can do. I’m told the vicar is on his knees even now praying by the High Altar. I’m not sure how that’s going to help us, I’m really not.’

  ‘Correct me if I’m wrong, Mr Drake,’ said Powerscourt. ‘It seems to me that the position is as follows. Your choir has been booked in for this recital for weeks if not months. You can’t cancel it now because you can’t reach all the people who might be coming. My Lord Bishop’, Powerscourt checked his watch, ‘may even have set off from his palace by now if he is a cautious traveller anxious to arrive in good time and sprinkle a few benedictions on the locals. Your choir is like a cricket team that has lost its best batsman and its best bowler and has nobody left to be twelfth man.’

  While Powerscourt paused briefly, Lady Lucy took up the story.

  ‘Surely, Mr Drake, it’s perfectly obvious what you have to do. You just have to make do with what you’ve got. Explain to the audience at the beginning that you have lost all these people through the influenza. Apologize for the fact that the sound will not be what you hoped. That is the best thing to do, is it not?’

  ‘We’ve thought of that, Lady Powerscourt,’ said Drake, ‘and we don’t think it will work. You see, it’s the tenor and the soprano who have gone. Without them the whole oratorio is going to sound wrong, let alone missing the different solo parts they perform within the Messiah. It would be like Hamlet without the Prince or Macbeth without the witches or The Tempest without Caliban. It’s not as though they were singing some new work nobody had ever heard before. There’s a tradition of singing Handel’s Messiah in Candelsby church that goes back generations. Some of these people know it virtually off by heart. They come to each new performance like a bunch of wine lovers going to taste the latest Château Lafite.’

  ‘You did say tenor and soprano, didn’t you, Mr Drake?’ Powerscourt was looking meaningfully at Lady Lucy as he spoke.

  ‘Yes, I did,’ said Drake, looking perplexed.

  Powerscourt managed to raise an eyebrow in inquisitive mode in Lady Lucy’s direction. There was a slight but unmistakable nod in reply.

  ‘Well,’ said Powerscourt, ‘if you’re willing to take a chance, Mr Drake, then we might just be able to help you.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ said a confused Drake.

  ‘This and only this. Lady Powerscourt and I have sung the tenor and soprano parts in the Messiah before. The tunes are so memorable you never really forget them but I think we would need a quick refresher course in the solo parts at least. What do you say to that, Mr Drake?’

  The hotel manager was on his feet, shaking them both by the hand and performing a sort of impromptu jig on his carpet, nearly knocking over the Earl Grey and scones of a couple of elderly spinsters come to the hotel for a peaceful afternoon tea.

  ‘Thank God!’ he cried. ‘Thank God for the crooked bridge that brought your car low! Thank God you are here in our hour of need! I will bring you straight away to St Michael’s and the vicar can run you through your paces. I must just tell Mabel to mind the hotel while I’ve gone. She’s much better at it than I am anyway.’

  Two minutes later the three of them were walking briskly up the street towards St Michael and All Angels. Attentive passers-by would have heard a female voice singing, ‘I know that my Redeemer liveth and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the Earth.’ Lady Lucy’s voice soared upwards into the evening sky and was lost before it reached the stars.

  2

  ‘At least we’ll be able to get our hands on some money now the old bastard’s dead.’ Edward Dymoke, tubby third son of the late Lord Candlesby, was addressing his elder brother Henry in the saloon of Candlesby Hall, a mangy dog with three legs lounging at his feet. Richard the redhead, the eldest son, the new Earl, was reading a newspaper at the far side of the room, as if he wished to put as much space as possible between himself and his brothers. Most of the space between them was occupied by a disused billiard table with two pockets hanging out and a rug concealing whatever damage the young of Candlesby had managed to inflict on the playing surface over the years.

  ‘Absolutely,’ said Henry. ‘I’m up for a spot of money too. I’ll be able to place some decent bets at the races at last. Do you know, I think I might take a holiday in Monte Carlo and have a flutter at the tables. What are you going to do with yours?’

  ‘I thought I would escape from all this dreary countryside for a start,’ said Edward, kicking a decrepit stuffed fox by the side of the hearth. ‘I’ve had enough of fields and grass and wheat and harvests and rain and trees and wet leaves and beefy women who look as if they�
��ve done nothing but bake and wash clothes all their lives. It’s the city life for me. London? New York? Paris? I’ve been told there are plenty of gorgeous whores on the Champs-Elysées and the Boulevard Saint-Michel.’

  ‘I wonder how much there is,’ said Henry reflectively. ‘Money, I mean.’

  ‘God knows,’ said Edward, reluctant to return to Candlesby Hall from his trysts with the good-time girls of Paris, ‘but if you stand at the highest point near here up by that dreary mausoleum on the hill – it’s not what you’d call high but it’s the highest thing for miles around – all the land you can see belongs to us. Maybe we should sell some of it.’

  There was a cackle that might have been a snarl from the far side of the room. Richard put down his newspaper, revealing a large damp patch on the wall behind him, and advanced towards his brothers.

  ‘You stupid pair!’ he began. ‘Who in heaven’s name do you think you are, to start talking about money and how you’re going to spend it? What makes you think you are going to inherit any money?’

  Richard had reached the other side of the room and was now in spitting distance of his brothers. He glanced at them both in turn in a gesture of supreme contempt.

  ‘How do you know there is any money, for God’s sake? Or are you just assuming there must be some because you’d like to get your hands on as much of it as you can? Well, let me tell you one or two things that might not have occurred to you.’

  Richard sat down and continued to address his brothers as if they had just failed the entrance test for England’s stupidest regiment.

  ‘Let me remind you for a start of the batting order round here. I am the eldest son. I inherit the title. You don’t. I inherit the estate. You don’t. I inherit this house. You don’t. You don’t inherit a thing. Quite soon I shall be called to London to be installed as a member of the House of Lords, where I shall make my views known to my fellow countrymen. I shall do everything in my power to make life difficult for that vulgar little commoner Lloyd George. You two’ – he stared balefully at his brothers – ‘are younger sons. Younger sons, unless they are very lucky, do not inherit. They do not inherit anything at all. That is why so many occupations like vicars and wine merchants and those people who play with money in the City of London were invented; it’s all to give younger sons something to do, something that can stop them being a drain on their families. Monte Carlo? The prostitutes of Paris? I think not, brothers!’

  As he made his way to the door Richard turned for a parting shot. ‘There’s one other thing you should be aware of,’ he said. ‘You talk as if there was money, as if the estate and everything is solvent. Well, I had a talk with our steward this afternoon. There isn’t any money. There are only debts, mortgages, loans that could add up to as much as seventy or eighty thousand pounds, maybe more. We don’t know the final figure yet. That’s not money we’ve got. That’s money we owe other people. There’s absolutely nothing for younger sons!’

  An elderly verger was lighting the candles in the church of St Michael and All Angels as Drake and the Powerscourts arrived. An erect old lady with white hair was dusting the pews one last time, paying particular attention to the two front rows, where distinguished visitors could be expected to sit. Specks of dust, after all, might be clearly visible on the Episcopal purple. Kneeling by the rail in front of the altar as if he were a candidate for communion, the vicar, the Reverend Peter Moorhouse, could be heard faintly, praying for deliverance.

  When the introductions were made and he realized that here were a new tenor and a new soprano, risen from the ditch by the humpbacked bridge to solve the problems of the Candlesby Messiah, he seized them both by the hand.

  ‘Truly,’ he said, ‘salvation is come to us here. May the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make the light of his countenance shine upon you and be gracious unto you and give you his peace … Heavens, I’m confusing the prayers for Evensong with my thanks for you; how silly of me. It is surely as the poet says: more things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of. And I had thought it almost presumptuous of me to ask God to send us reinforcements. Now then, I’m talking too much. My dear wife always tells me I talk too much – what were you saying, George, a little rehearsal, was it?’ The vicar still had the lithe figure of the long distance runner he had been at university. The Reverend Moorhouse also held the record for the longest sermon ever delivered from the pulpit at St Michael and All Angels at one hour twenty-seven minutes. The more sporting members of his choir and congregation placed bets on the duration every week.

  ‘I think our guests would find a little rehearsal helpful, Vicar,’ said George Drake. ‘Just the solo arias they will have to sing this evening, not the whole thing.’

  ‘Of course, of course,’ said the vicar, virtually running to the organ and ferreting about among the sheet music.

  ‘Now then, let me give you both a little word of advice, if I may.’ The vicar was turning over the pages as he spoke. ‘Most people’, he waved a hand upwards in the general direction of the roof, high above, ‘think they have to try really hard to make their voice carry all over this church, because it’s so high. But for some reason – you wouldn’t have thought late medieval stonemasons would have known about the reach of the human voice, would you – that’s not so. The acoustics are almost perfect, so you can sing well within yourself and it’ll carry beautifully. Now then, Lord Powerscourt, I think you open the batting. I’ll give you the cue with my right hand, so.’

  The vicar began playing. Powerscourt didn’t need the cue. I was only seventeen years old the last time I sang this, he said to himself, taking a deep breath and launching into ‘Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people, saith your God. Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem …’ Soon he was so lost in the beauty of the music and his own memories that he forgot to work out how many years had passed since he sang this aria with the local choir in his parents’ church in Ireland, his mother watching proudly from the second row.

  ‘Excellent,’ said the vicar as they reached the end. ‘That will do splendidly. I don’t think we need try out any more in case your voice grows tired. I’m sure Lady Powerscourt will be even better. Which aria would you like to sing, Lady Powerscourt?’

  ‘The shepherds? Would that do?’ asked Lady Lucy.

  The great organ boomed forth. Lady Lucy sang. The vicar was delighted. George Drake was conferring with the cleaning lady about the Bishop.

  ‘Seven o’clock start,’ said the vicar. ‘I expect everybody to be here in good time. Thank you so much, Lord and Lady Powerscourt. I cannot tell you how much we owe you.’

  The three eldest Dymokes were back in the saloon, bickering among themselves over drinks before dinner. They were about to embark on a fruitless argument about the size of the family debts when the door opened and a pale youth with blond hair and good looks that were almost feminine came in and sat down by the fire.

  ‘Good evening, brothers,’ he said to the company.

  ‘My God,’ sneered Edward, ‘look what the cat’s brought in from the madhouse upstairs!’

  ‘Bedlam has closed its doors for the evening,’ said Henry. ‘Have you left your jailer upstairs? You haven’t come down here to eat with us, have you? Heaven forbid! Why don’t you just head back up the stairs to your own apartment and lock the door behind you?’

  James Dymoke was fifteen years old. He was the youngest of the five sons. His mother had died having him and the elder brothers always maintained that she hadn’t had time to finish James off properly before she passed. Bits of him were certainly missing. The doctors thought he was suffering from an incurable form of epilepsy about which they knew very little. On many days he was perfectly normal and showed no signs of illness at all. On others he would have fits, he would be withdrawn and behave briefly like a mad person. He lived in private rooms far from the rest of the family on the top floor with a medical assistant to look after him. Very few people outside Candlesby Hall knew of his existence. He had never been to school. />
  ‘I just thought’, James said hesitantly, ‘that we should be together on the day we lost our father.’

  ‘We should be together,’ Henry said, pointing in an arc that included his elder brothers but did not include James, ‘but that doesn’t include you. You’re not proper family. You’re not even a proper person. You’re just a freak from the upper floor.’

  After all his years in Candlesby Hall James knew that he could expect little better from Henry and Edward. Richard would pretend to be above the fray but would never take his side. James suspected the other two had a private contest to see who could make him cry first. His only supporter was the brother who wasn’t there.

  ‘He was my father too, you know,’ said James defiantly.

  ‘She was our mother, too,’ Edward snapped, ‘until you killed her being born.’

  ‘That’s not true, you know that’s not true,’ James shouted, tears beginning to form in his eyes. His brothers had known for years that their mother was the weakest spot in James’ armour.

  The door to the saloon was suddenly flung open. ‘B-b-brothers! P-p-please! Could we not have some family harmony on the day of Father’s death? Arguing is so p-p-pointless these days!’

  Charles Dymoke, twenty-two years old, was the fourth in line to the indebted estate. He had become rather a dandy down in London, sporting on this sad day a light brown hunting jacket with a crisp white shirt and a blue cravat.